Freedom to be Uninsured

Vanity Fair had an interesting article about Republicans’ talking point that Trumpcare will allow people the freedom to choose to be uninsured. Senate Republican majority whip John Cornyntweeted a Wall Street Journal opinion piece with the dubious title “How Many Jobs Does Obamacare Kill?” [Not many if at all]

Emily Singerhighlighted the senator’s tweet and added, “Apparently to Cornyn, he views 22 million people losing health care as a fair trade for maybe 250K jobs.”

“If you’re not going to force people to buy something they don’t want, then they won’t buy it,” House Speaker Paul Ryantold Fox News. “So it’s not that people are getting pushed off a plan. It’s that people will choose not to buy something they don’t like or want.”

Wyoming Senator John Barrasso stated that uninsured individuals “were not actually losing insurance…because it’s a free country, they would choose, because we eliminate the individual mandate, to not buy insurance.”

This disingenuous talking point among defenders of the Better Care Reconciliation Act is false. The Congressional Budget Office’s assessment of the Senate Republicans’ bill reveals in the report: “few low-income people would purchase any plan” because they can’t afford to, especially given the expectation that premiums on reasonably high-quality insurance (so-called “silver plans”) are likely to increase for all Americans under the Republican plan.